Tag: fire
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It’s beginning to get contemplative
The journey through Banff and Jasper National Park is like travelling through one euphoric postcard of Canadian landscape into another. Except without “Wish You Were Here” slapped across the sky in neon letters, and sometimes, quite frankly, I’m glad you’re not. The beauty I find in the wild is often in the remote and isolated…
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I need a pet Bat for this adventure…
I need a bat. The flying, insect-eating variety, not the sporting kind. Walking around with a cricket bat on a leash might be assuming a kind of crazy that can wait till I’m in my eighties. Although on reflection, it would give my flying bat something to cling to and sleep on, slung over my…
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Banff & Jasper, and a bit of blue for the dads
The massive, monstrous hotel at Lake Louise (Banff National Park) is a fine example of a failure of aesthetics. After the original wooden hotel/lodge burnt down in the late 19th century, it was rebuilt and extended. It is a construction disaster, in the most inappropriate location – and it upsets me. Most towns we have…
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The slightly ranty post…
I feel like I should judge Canada, while waving my judgy finger, for allowing such a sordid sin of commercialisation within a national park. Yet for some reason, I find Banff to be more of a community and thriving town rather than a specific, tourist-catering gift shop which pampers to the whims of tour buses…
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Reaching the Rockies
Since crossing the border into Canada, we’ve driven over 2000 miles across the prairies and we haven’t seen a single police car, police officer, or even a speed camera! They must be here, but it couldn’t be more different from the paranoid and profiteering, policed nation to the south, which I have been used too.…
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Even when it’s dull, it isn’t
Driving across the four principalities of Canada, or the few states across the centre of the USA if we had gone that route must surely be, some of the dullest driving on earth (as well as the M25 in rush hour, but at least you can get out and talk to your fellow, traffic jam…
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Do you have any guns?
After the elation of seeing Mr Wolf, it was time to cross the border into Canada. It wasn’t the strangest border crossing I’ve ever encountered, but it was in the middle of a working factory. We drove under an over-head pipeline and over multiple rail road tracks, snaking our way through the middle of an…
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I’m Russell Crowe… only without the lovely sandals
A sleepless start to the night as one of us left a slither of opportunity open for the “skeetos” to come after me as I tried to settle. They can smell me a mile way and just when I think we’ve pulled into a windy, waterless spot, KP is sympathising (although grateful it’s me and…
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Mackinac, the fudge, and rubbing myself against a cheese grater
The towns on the forehead of the Exogorth outline (well done if you worked out that obscure reference), are quite picturesque in the sunshine. Much of the monster’s brow, with roots steeped in French exploration and the American-Indian wars, built on the industries of mining, logging, and shipping, the towns today express a certain pride…
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Ocean-fronted home for napping bear
Our first day on the road was a shaky one. It was also the first time KP gave me the reigns to his four wheeled, fancy lady, and that reminds me, I don’t think she has a name! The drive from Clayton started beautifully. KP drove in the morning sunshine; along the sparkling St Lawrence…
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The world is full of generous, gin-loving ladies
I brushed shoulders with some old friends at the aptly named TILT picnic at Zenda Farms….because after all I’ve drank in the last two weeks, I feel like I’m on an obscure angle to the ground. I exaggerate….maybe it was the uneven farm yard. Christmas came early, as I forgot what I ordered from the…
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Cherry Pie, Bananagrams, and struggling to sober up
If my navigation in 2014 was a walk in the park, this year I’m jumping the fence. Although travelling mostly by automobile this time, I am aiming to travel across the USA and Canada, and out to the USA’s rape capital (six times higher than the national average, apparently) – Alaska. Everyday, is indeed, a…
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Butt Bulbs & Bucolic Beauty
After being chaperoned around twenty miles of the industrious and steaming streets of New York City by a marvellously-moustached, mounted park policeman, I journeyed the four hours north east, to Northampton, MA. Back on last year’s familiar trail, I ambled through this area over a year ago, when the ground was frozen, the bears were…
Not a Travel Blog 